Mick LaSalle

This is one well-made thriller, and for a director who wants to work in that genre, this is as strong a first feature as any filmmaker could hope for.

Dunst is not the only person doing quality work in All Good Things, but she is the only one worth watching.

The tribute to an aging parent is moving and gives this routine comedy an extra something.

The essential mistake that's made about Lewis is assuming his movies were intended mainly to be funny. I suspect they were intended mainly to be really, really weird.

Flawless is a fictional tale, but something in director Michael Radford's conscientious, methodical presentation gives it the feeling of true history.

We all know how actors overact when they play Italians, and we all know how actors overact when they play brain-damaged characters, so just imagine Knight's performance as a brain-damaged Italian American.

The subtitle of Hardy's novel was "A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented," and that's the approach taken here.

This is a well-made, well-plotted and sensitive movie.

The Laundromat finds director Steven Soderbergh in a playful mood, but this time he’s a little too playful, and the result is a scattered and seemingly trivial movie about a serious subject — a lighthearted, jolly expose of international money laundering.

The Zookeeper’s Wife achieves its grandeur, not through the depiction of grand movements, but through its attentiveness to the shifts and flickers of the soul.

Ezra is an opportunity for Bobby Cannavale to show his abilities as a dramatic actor, but his performance is hampered by one thing: He plays an idiot.

The important thing is that Dreamland accomplishes its main intention, which is to make us invest in this strange love story.

This movie is not recommended for people who need to know what's going on. The Woman in the Fifth, an English and French language film from the Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, is watchable and enjoyable, but it's fairly impenetrable, and it gets more peculiar as it goes along.

A thoroughly satisfying, completely entertaining film that's also, rather surprisingly, an emotionally full experience.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a lovingly made, gorgeously realized, meticulously crafted failure. It has big names, a big budget, big sets, a big, thundering score and even big hair. But it doesn't do it. It doesn't excite or fascinate but just lies there on the screen. [13 Nov 1992, p. C1]

Starts off with a burst of energy but becomes tedious midway through.

Some of the elements in the film are inexplicable and some are undeveloped, but there are a handful of nicely crafted set pieces.

Lacks, a story that makes it feel personal.

Because Gyllenhaal is a more complicated actor than Swayze, and more comically adept, the new “Road House” has more humor and more attention to the peculiarities of the central character.

The Grand Seduction slowly brings its story into focus and then sneaks up and becomes quite funny.

This is like any other Edward Burns film, except for one thing. It's unmistakably better. This is the movie I believe Burns has been trying to make since "The Brothers McMullen," 11 years ago.

The drama surrounding the romance gets a little too precious -- though I loved it 15 years ago; maybe I'm getting cynical -- but everything else is excellent, including Jack Nicholson, who is subtle and sly in a small, key role. [18 Jan 2004]

Owen is a magnetic, sensitive presence at the center of a movie that doesn't deserve him and that barely deserves to be seen.

The possibilities of Jenna's confusion are exploited for full comic effect. Garner, who turns out to be a charming, abandoned comedian, makes Jenna's incredulousness and innocence very funny and occasionally even touching.

Margot Robbie plays Tanya, Kim’s best friend and professional rival, and it’s a real asset to have someone with that kind of a star wattage in a supporting role.

Drama is as much about perspective as it is about events, and the angle provided by How I Live Now turns out to be self-defeating.

For almost an hour, it keeps us off balance. But once we find that balance, the movie seems to coast.

Wexler gets tired of his own movie near the end of it. The viewer will get tired in 15 minutes.

The movie gets bogged down in the formula conventions of romantic comedy, and in the process, it loses all honesty.

As it stands, her music gets under your skin and makes you feel good - and the movie makes you feel good about Katy Perry.

Though the movie drips and aches with good intentions, I do wonder how lesbians may feel about seeing lesbianism presented as a mere traumatized distortion of female heterosexuality.

Fortunately, Arbid didn’t want to make a movie about crazy people or about people going crazy, so she pursued a third option: She made the woman interesting. So “Simple Passion” is a movie about something that, sooner or later, happens to lots of people, but the fun of this story is that it happens to someone we want to watch.

Falls victim to a fatal lack of narrative drive, suspense and drama. Kidman and Hopkins are wrong for their roles, and that, combined with a pervading inevitability, cuts the film off from any sustained vitality. The result is something admirable but lifeless.

The experience of Southpaw is rather like seeing the truth behind the cliches, revived in all their pain and power to surprise.

The sequel is even more enjoyable than the first, with action sequences that are as good or better than anything you’ll see at the theater.

For whatever faults she had as a candidate, Chisholm earned her paragraph in the annals of our democracy, and “Shirley” does a conscientious job of fleshing out her story.

In every way, Miss Potter is a very beautiful thing.

This remake of the 1981 horror classic starts well, but it soon degenerates into tiresome shock gore that overstays its welcome, despite the film's modest run time. Jane Levy as a heroin addict going through withdrawal is the one bright spot.

This is a deluxe French film, longer than usual, with strong performances by French cinema mainstays Catherine Deneuve and Guillaume Canet and a movie-stealing turn from relative newcomer Adele Haenel, who has become a major French actress in just the past couple of years.

Most of Thor: Love and Thunder is a mess, pleased with itself and tonally everywhere. As bad as one of the better “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, but that’s still pretty horrible.

Madagascar isn't deep and would have no business being deep. But that it keeps one foot in reality is enough to keep us guessing.

Dreamland has vitality and emotional truth underlying all its interactions. And the young women, Agnes Bruckner and Kelli Garner, are superb.

There's a way to love City of Ghosts, and that's to watch it not as a story that should add up to something, but as a series of little episodes with their own specialness and integrity.

A film of audacity and total gut-level appeal.

Unfortunately, structural flaws and a built-in lack of suspense keep it from being nearly as moving as it was intended to be.

The picture is willfully gross, fundamentally stupid and in no way worth the discomfort of watching it. Yet it may be the most well-crafted piece of garbage this year.

Our Friend is both a tribute to a friend and to those rare people that are too humble to realize their own wisdom.

In terms of story and atmosphere and overall feeling, Cars 2 is a brand-new experience - and a distinct improvement.

A legit action movie.

In “France,” Dumont has not created a commentary on modern life, so don’t approach the movie looking for that. He’s made a movie about the consequences of modern life for one person, a portrait of contemporary mores as seen from the inside.

Neeson is as earnest as ever, but the movie’s tone is arch. Neeson doesn’t think he’s funny, but the director thinks everything is funny, or at the very least, absurd.

The best thing about Strangers With Candy is its relentlessness. It doesn't back off on its absurd humor, doesn't try to make sense and doesn't soft-pedal the characters.

The story is on the weak side, and many of the jokes are just a bit flat. And yet there are enough cute bits and special-effects surprises that it will probably be worth people's while, especially if they intended to see the movie in the first place. [22 Nov 1991, p.C1]

Ordinary Angels has some of the feeling of an after-school special because it’s a heartwarming movie in which everybody is nice. But it’s more well-made than most. It hooks the audience from the first scene and then builds in tension over the course of its almost two-hour running time.

Suffers from a problem in its rhythm. It's not that its pace is too slow, but that it's too regular, and this lack of syncopation makes it feel slow.

But there’s not enough in “Finch” to sustain an audience’s interest for a full 115 minutes. At 85 minutes, it might have been a touching and eccentric novelty. As it stands, “Finch” is something of a slog. A slog in good company, but a slog all the same.

It’s as if no aspect of Perfect Find were thought through because everyone expected that, whatever happened, Gabrielle Union could be counted on to carry the movie. She almost does, but doesn’t.

Somebody I Used to Know comes dangerously close to being interesting. It’s a romantic comedy, but it’s almost a twisted drama about a seriously damaged creep who goes back to her hometown and starts wrecking people’s lives.

Home for the Holidays strikes such a perfect note that it's hard at first to realize what an impressive balancing act it is.

Roger Michell directs it as though it were an uproarious comedy, but the laughs are light, and the story's real appeal lies in its behind-the-scenes look at the manners and politics of morning television.

Traveller is entertaining in a mild, relaxing way.

In the most extreme moments, Thomas hits her career pinnacle.

If Zabeil didn’t want to deliver a formula picture, he needed to come up with something better than the formula.

A sly comedy starring Henry Kendall and Joan Barry, about a newly rich couple who go a little crazy on an ocean liner. The witty script was co-written by Alma Reville, Hitchcock's wife and lifelong collaborator. [18 Feb 2007, p.26]

If Wrath of Man has a weakness, it’s that even when everything is explained, it doesn’t quite make sense. But a movie like this is about pleasure in the moment, and on that score, it delivers.

The film is engaging but also has a certain creaking familiarity.

Witless banter might have won Ginger Rogers for Fred Astaire, but Thompson is too smart for that.

Horrible Bosses has a handful of hilarious moments, but it's not exactly funny and not exactly serious, either.

Mama is skillfully made, and although Chastain is the best thing in it, she's not the only thing in it.

Field is at her best, downtrodden and determined as ever, and Sheila Rosenthal as Mahtob, Betty and Moody's little daughter, is adorable. [11 Jan 1991, p.E1]

While Dark Blue may not be easy to watch, it's exceptionally well made.

Monotonous.

I liked every minute in it. Other films are like empty containers; this one's full. It's full of invention, full of moments, full of business, full of the nuances of human interaction, full of feeling.

Burden is a film of integrity, with something even better than a social conscience. It has a social purpose. If you see it, you’ll learn something.

Some of the best bits of the original movie are replayed here but lose their punch the second time around - the horse manure bit, the skate board sequence. Maybe people who never saw the first movie will get a big kick out of them. [22 Nov 1989, p.E1]

The Passion of the Christ should have left audiences in a state of exaltation. Instead it just leaves audiences exhausted.

There’s no way to call Havoc a good movie, but as bad movies go, this is a good one. Depending on your mood, its variety of craziness could be what you’re looking for.

I Origins is at its best when it's a personal story about relationships, and it has a strong first hour.

A light film, airy, likable and set in Venice.

The Equalizer is silly but irresistible, taking situations of inherent gut-level impact and exploiting them for every bit of emotion and tension. It could never have been a great movie.

Guy Ritchie is the worst screenwriter in the world, but, to be fair, he is not the worst director. He is only the worst director of the people who actually get to make movies.

The documentary is eye-opening and very much worth seeing, even though it can’t help but be disheartening.

Sixty-seven minutes in, I looked up and noticed the movie had 53 minutes left to go, even though every plot element had been resolved. And that's precisely where the movie went to hell. [23 Nov 2014, p.M21]

I loved the picture, without being blind to its faults. But you don't judge a movie with a scorecard but by what it gives you, and this one gives more than anything I've seen in months. [04 Oct 1991, p.D1]

The opening is spectacular, but the rest is fairly routine.

Not surprisingly for a movie of this type, there are lots of scenes of violence, including hand-to-hand combat. The fight choreography is exceptional. In the “John Wick” movies, the violence seems almost like a ballet. Here the fighting is just as intricate, but it also seems like actual fighting, and Hemsworth seems like an actual person who’s doing it.

Most of life is melodramatic — emotional, involving and lacking the dignity of straight drama. 3 Hearts is life as felt from the inside.

At the very least the film can be congratulated for being anarchic enough to explore an attraction between the two oldest Brady kids, Marcia and Greg.

The Night We Never Met gets phony but it doesn't get boring, and that's not bad. [30 Apr 1993, p.C5]

This isn't pleasant to watch. Neither is it amusing, intellectually engaging, whimsically fascinating, coldly satirical or painfully poignant, though at any given moment in this erratic film director Tom Tykwer might be trying for one of these conflicting tones.

It weds all the winning aspects of the Neeson formula to a ticking-clock plot, full of tense moments and gripping sequences.

Never rises above the level of its gimmick.

There have been many adultery movies over the years, but Leaving has some aspects that make it different and interesting.

This is a movie you might want to talk about afterward, so try to see it with other people.

The new movie lacks something, a special something. It's a quality that has characterized some of the best of the first 19 Bond movies: extravagant ludicrousness.

It’s a strength, not a weakness, of Jacquot’s that he makes movies about people. The ideas can take care of themselves.

Sally Potter's twin interests - in grand world movements and in the grand internal movements in people lives - are effectively brought to bear in Ginger & Rosa, her best film of the decade.

It's a tepid, quiet and uneventful film, directed almost in slow motion, with no narrative propulsion and with a succession of very similar scenes. The actors speak softly and pause a lot. And in the background is the steady hum of the soundtrack.

It's the typical elements that make Eraser no more than a solid bit of fluff: This is one of those movies where good guys don't miss, and bad guys can't shoot to save their lives.

Woodley has been first-rate in everything she’s been in, particularly the “Divergent” series. But there’s something about her performance here that feels like the sincere and dutiful dispersal of medicine.

A romantic comedy that flirts with something serious but never gets past the flirting stage.

A mix of the powerful and the ridiculous, and eventually the ridiculous wins. The movie deals with a big subject that has received scant treatment in movies - the genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s - giving voice and testimony to what happened there. But the ill-conceived fictional elements take the picture right off the rails.

Tag isn’t interesting at all, but its failure is. It’s the kind of movie that makes the viewer ask questions, such as, why isn’t this working? Why is this bombing? Why is this dying the death? Why am I shifting in my seat just to stay conscious? The movie seems like it should be funny, but it’s not, so why?

The result is a satisfying and original picture.

A few times every year, Hollywood makes a mistake, violates formula and actually makes a great picture. Falling Down is one of the great mistakes of 1993, a film too good and too original to win any Oscars but one bound to be remembered in years to come as a true and ironic statement about life in our time. [26 Feb 1993, p.D1]

It's really not bad... It's a genuine vault at greatness that misses the mark -- but survives.

How could a little story like this get stretched to 124 minutes? It's at least 30 minutes too long.

In Mimic, director Guillermo Del Toro has created a dark, grotesque world that's hard to look at, and impossible to stop looking at.

Maher makes Michael Moore look incredibly likable in comparison.

Bezucha made something perverse, a feel-bad holiday film about a repellent family, with a milquetoast dad and a smug, devious harpy of a mom.

Still the spectacle of this, of beautiful, sensitive children at the mercy of damaged adults — this is what we take from The Glass Castle. It’s a universal awfulness rendered with truth and detail, and somehow that’s enough.

For those interested in this rich period in American literature, it’s a treat.

The movie's one flaw is this: The whole movie hangs on the gradual unraveling of the central mystery and is made with the expectation that the audience is fascinated and hanging on every tidbit.

Pike’s own commitment is wonderful to witness. Radioactive is a good movie, a bit more imaginative than most (at several points, the movie takes a quick leap into the future to show the various ways radioactivity has been used, for good and for ill), but Pike makes it something to see, simply by giving it everything.

This is a profound saga that makes for a great American movie.

The result is a movie that, like the book, is episodic and has dips in energy but has more than its share of glory and illumination.

The Details has a light tone, but it's anything but light in purpose. It's committed and passionate, one of the most perceptive and morally persuasive movies of 2012.

Either “Nightbitch” shouldn’t have been made or its premise should have been transformed and built upon.

Part conscious and part unconscious, Watchmen tells us of a world without hope and then makes us wonder if we're already living in it.

It’s definitely not for everybody, but even a non-fan stumbling into the theater accidentally will find whole sections here to enjoy.

The emotional core of the movie, the relationship between Nicky and Jess, lacks impact, mostly because you can’t believe a word that they say, but also because Smith is not a strong leading man.

For at least a half hour, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is a brilliant and exciting film and seems almost sure to be one of the best of 2010. Then it becomes simply good. Then it becomes merely interesting. And then, about 15 minutes before the finish, it becomes dull and interminable.

The weakness of “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” aside from the fact that at 136 minutes it’s a little too long, is that it follows the less interesting character of Baranov. But this isn’t Dano’s fault. He can’t make this fictional fellow more interesting than Putin.

It exudes goodwill and high spirits, occasionally makes you feel really good, and yet here and there and in some definite ways, it kinda sorta stinks.

The action is not just big — big is easy. It’s creative. It’s choreographed. It’s unexpected and delightful. It’s lots of fun and a stark contrast to the previous film, “Furious 7,” which was huge but flat, just commotion without inspiration.

Thanks to him (Neeson), I not only enjoyed Non-Stop, but I'd watch it again. Particularly on a plane.

The history itself is the main appeal here.

Though directed by someone who has been making movies for four years, “Drive-Away Dolls” feels like a young person’s movie, which is a good thing. It also seems like a movie directed by someone who grew up watching Tarantino movies, not Coen Brothers movies, which is unexpected but welcome, too.

Best of all, the filmmakers know when to pull the plug. Date Night clocks in at 88 minutes and would not have been as funny at 89.

French Exit is worth seeing because it gives a juicy role to Michelle Pfeiffer, who is something to marvel at. But it’s a frustrating film because, as a whole, it’s just not nearly as good as its central performance.

If “Remarkably Bright Creatures” only had that magnificent octopus going for it, it would be halfway to a good movie. But the human characters are interesting, as well, showing the stresses of the different stages of life.

It's a coy, cautious film about a frank, fearless writer.

It's a strong, lean piece of writing that moves quickly. Nothing is wasted, and nothing happens the way you'd expect.

Ritchie is a director with no instinct for the audience, and he can’t hold things together for an entire film. He seems at a loss, from moment to moment, as to what he should emphasize.

Miss Julie has almost everything — good actors, impeccable sets and direction rich in emotional detail — but it lacks madness and passion, and without those elements, it becomes a mere intellectual exercise.

The bottom line is that the filmmakers are working with nothing here — no characters to speak of, no interpersonal relationships, no story with any suspense or capacity to engage, and no script with any humor or wit. What can they do?

Neeson has a way of getting upset - a frantic purposefulness - that fills viewers with both empathy and anticipation: He's so miserable that we care.

That the movie is leisurely and unconventional is all part of its charm, too - until it isn't anymore. The movie is a tale of corruption, but then it's not. It's a love story, but no, not quite. Later, it flirts with becoming a great journalism tale, or at least a whimsical journalism tale, but that vein leads nowhere, too. Nor is it much of anything else.

The story, like the protagonist, floats along in a noodly sort of way, intelligent, benign and ineffectual.

What's much more fascinating and enriching is Eastwood's Olympian vision, the sympathetic and all-encompassing understanding of the pain and grandeur of life on earth.

Gooding can't will this well-meaning film into life.

The result is a movie that combines a seriousness of purpose with an impish delight in craft, in a way Hitchcock would have appreciated.

A caustic comedy of Hollywood manners.

The film never settles into an assured rhythm, and instead the actors always seem to be pushing, putting the hard sell on an audience that, however distracted by the strenuousness of the sales pitch, still isn't buying.

All Hollywood and no Homer, but within its limits, it's a vigorous, entertaining movie.

It's a delicate, intelligent movie about modern parenthood and the pressures that children face, and it features a cast of talented actors who were clearly committed to the movie's message.

If you love the “Fast & Furious” franchise, you will like Fast X. If you merely like the series, the new movie will leave you indifferent. And if you’ve never seen a “Fast & Furious” movie, Fast X is not the place to start. It’s a middling installment, a big step down from the stupid-wonderful “F9: The Fast Saga,” but with just enough of the crazy stunts and chases that you can’t find anywhere else.

Maleficent imparts a feeling of enchantment. Here is a world that's strange and beautiful.

Senior Year is a just-OK movie, but it’s a very good Rebel Wilson movie, in that she has been funny in supporting roles, but this is the first time she has excelled as the name above the title.

The main problem with "Pretty in Pink" today is simply that the entire section involving Jon Cryer, as Ringwald's pompadour-wearing best friend, is excruciating to watch. It must have been equally excruciating to perform. Basically, any time Cryer is onscreen, the story ceases to advance. He is there as comic relief only - or comic filler - but there's nothing funny about either the role or the performance. Still, there's a really good, perceptive 50-minute teenage story buried in this 96-minute movie. And a pretty good time capsule, besides.

The best thing in the movie is Peter MacNicol as Dana's boss at the museum, a slippery character with an incomprehensible accent. [16 Jun 1989, p. E1]

Hard to hate, but if you actually want to love it, you've got to force yourself. [27 Nov 1991, p.E1]

Dinner for Schmucks is lumbering, inconsistent and about 20 minutes too long, but it's funny. It's funny from the beginning, and it stays funny, even as it beats scenes to death and overstays its welcome.

There's something in Ned Kelly' that's lost in the translation from Australia to America, and the overly emotional film score is just a symptom.

2 Days in the Valley is skillfully made. The beginning introduces a handful of disparate characters. It juggles their stories and then deftly starts bringing them together through some surprising and unexpected turns.

Joy never completely loses its way. But it almost does, and it never quite arrives.

It's just not enough to say that The Three Stooges is the death of comedy. Rather, it's the death, burial, putrefaction and decomposition of comedy. It is where comedy, once alive, ends up as dust blowing in the wind, like something out of a really bad Kansas song.

The main appeal of Summerland, a considerable one, is that it allows Gemma Arterton to hold the screen for a nearly unbroken 90 minutes. It showcases her in a variety of modes and moods and provide some huge acting moments that make us recognize that, somewhere along the line, Arterton has become a powerhouse.

The movie is reasonably entertaining, though it helps to be 6 years old.

In the end, W. makes up in immediacy what it lacks in objectivity.

An intelligent film with a sophisticated understanding of art and the significance it played in Hitler's psychology.

Hard, ugly and nasty yet a stylistically vigorous and often insightful piece of work.

Writer-director Peter Landesman has a fascinating and appalling story to tell here, and that cuts through the layers of corniness.

I don't see Edge of Darkness as a great movie, or a particularly exalted one, but I do see it as one made by people who know where the buttons are - and who know how to press them. Hard.

If there’s one thing interesting about “Spaceman,” it’s how it demonstrates how a great actress’ essence — just the essence, not even the performance — can elevate a nothing part.

The movie also allows Chan to demonstrate that he can act. In between setting traps, blowing things up and rendering people unconscious, Chan plays grief in The Foreigner, and his face contains all the sadness of the world.

The actors perform as though this were a first-class effort, and at times almost make you believe it. Matthew Modine is boyish and explosive, and Melanie Griffith further establishes herself as an interesting and original actress. Her line readings are odd, yet strangely right. [28 Sept 1990, p.E1]

There are some brief minutes when the tension drops and the story starts to sag, but Fukunaga almost always fills the frame with something worth seeing, and the story has a built-in suspense.

[Pedro Almodovar] gives it a nice try, but his approach turns out to be completely wrong for the material he's working with here. [25 May 1990]

A Tale of Love and Darkness is a dead film, an eminently worthy corpse.

The production values are first rate. But you will wait in vain to hear a good reason for this movie's existence.

The series suddenly springs back to life. It's delightful and exciting, with good jokes and fun characters. While it might lack the freshness of the first installment, the formula isn't stale, just familiar. And familiar in a cozy and pleasant way. [25 May 1990, p.E1]

The film is thorough and entertaining. It's enthusiastic about his contributions, but it's no hagiography, and it serves as both a celebration and a cautionary tale.

Sexy, peculiar and always entertaining.

This is a pretty good action movie that justifies bringing back the Superman franchise -- a dubious proposition to begin with -- by taking the plight of the superhero seriously. Henry Cavill is charismatic in the lead role, Amy Adams is an ideal Lois Lane and, as the villain, Michael Shannon does the best Michael Shannon impersonation you've ever seen.

Search for some independent inspiration, and you'll be looking for a long time.

Mostly unbearable.

Fennell (“Promising Young Woman,” “Saltburn”) is a skilled filmmaker who can put over her ideas. The problem is that all her ideas here are bad — self-defeating, enervating and, in several places, unintentionally hilarious.

In the end, this is not really a World War II movie. It’s just a pretty good action film that borrows the plot from about three or four “Fast and Furious” movies, while stealing riffs from Tarantino.

Its weaknesses are clumsy plotting and a less-than-satisfying ending.

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be there - to actually be there, man - this movie gets it.

This is kid stuff, but such well acted, well made stuff that inside 15 minutes you're sitting there like a teenager yourself wondering which girl Keith will wind up with. [27 Feb 1987]

The Devil All the Time is really a portrait of a place, told through the lives of several people across a span of about a dozen years, and the thing that makes it interesting — from start to finish — is that this place is so brutal and appalling and unexpected in its various cruelties that we cannot stop watching.

Despite some weaknesses, a sense gradually emerges in this film- not just an idea, but a strong feeling mixed with an idea - about the dance of good and evil over time.

Clifford the Big Red Dog brings a warm feeling every time I think of it, and I’m really glad I saw it.

Hitchcock isn't ambitious or complicated. It's simple, does what it sets out to do, and gets out before anyone even thinks about checking the time. More movies should be made in its image.

It's the complexity of Lurie's moral universe that makes it linger in the mind.

The only way Bill Murray could seem less like Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson is if the movie showed him winning a marathon.

Yet as ridiculous as Hefner's life sometimes seems, he has been an exemplary citizen, as this documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Brigitte Berman spells out.

Old is, at times, clumsy and obvious, but it’s different and weird, and it taps into something essential. It might be a distant second to The Sixth Sense, but it’s the second-best movie Shyamalan has made.

There are times, not too many, when the movie drags. But when you consider all the pitfalls avoided, and all the laughs and pleasures it provides along the way, Dark Shadows is a satisfying and skillful effort.

Fresh music and silly dialogue - those aspects of Purple Rain haven't changed over the years. [Review of re-release]

Has all the usual virtues of a good action suspense drama, but it lacks that extra something - that context, that vital interchange - that made the original "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" such a memorable experience in 1974.

A Korean film that takes an American genre and gets fancy with it.

There's a lot to appreciate in Street Kings, a tight, propulsive action thriller, but there's one thing to marvel at, and that's James Ellroy's command of story.

In a way it’s just another well-made thriller, but there are things here — currents captured, ideas frozen in time — that might make it more interesting as the years pass. For the time being, it’s good entertainment and deserves to be seen now.

One thing Yesterday does is rather miraculous. It forces us to hear these Beatles songs as if for the first time.

There’s enough variation and suspense, enough complication in the form of other characters with other concerns, that Ambulance stays fresh until the finish.

If this movie were a human being, it would be intelligent and sincere but so depressed as to be unable to get out of bed without a forklift.

Without question, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a remarkable piece of work, one of the most original and creative films of the past couple of years.

Embraces its identity as a sci-fi-summer-action-blockbuster extravaganza. Along the way, it actually comes close to finding the balance that Lee was looking for.

The young actresses are superb, and they make an appealing, believable group of friends.

Hellion is so sincere and so dull that some might mistake it for a true work of art.

Told from a different angle than any other Holocaust film I've seen.

An arresting portrait of a fascinating and somewhat mysterious personality.

It's marred by loaded language and a propagandistic tone that undercuts rather than promotes its purposes.

It's a complete mess, the spectacle of filmmakers blowing up their movie and everything in it, because they can't think of anything else to do.

To take such a subject and render it without focus, interest, or joy—to make a long, dull movie from it — qualified as some perverse sort of achievement.

The film is glossy, but awful. Frenetic, but awful. Expensive, but awful. ... And awful.

The result is that this is one of those rare movies that gets better as it goes along.

An impressive and imaginative fantasy.

Violent Night isn’t terrible, but it’s stuck between parodying something and trying to fit the genre it parodies. And it really should have been funnier.

As a documentary, it is very much what it set out to be - a celebration bordering on propaganda. Yet enough slips through to keep it interesting.

Actually, Mom is the essential difference between Wahlberg and Caan. Caan has the glow of mother love on him. Wahlberg plays Jim as having made the adjustment to a lack of love, but in a twisted way. He's gambling now to see if the universe loves him.

Clown in a Cornfield will never be ranked among the classics of our time, but there are aspects of it that are worthy of admiration.

The Flash gets credit for effort, because this superhero movie isn’t trying to be stupid and convoluted. It gets there by accident.

A creeping equanimity is taking over the work of John Sayles, a quality that in personal terms might be wise and coolheaded but in terms of drama is absolute death.

Funny throughout, but with a handful of really hilarious moments.

Spirited was never going to be any good, but it would have been slightly better — and a change of pace — if Reynolds and Ferrell had switched roles.

It's as if he has been trying to express something, or to make his own particular kind of good movie, for 10 whole years. Now he has.

Pure fun and worth seeing if you want to laugh.

Promised Land is a fine place to start appreciating Matt Damon, who always makes it seem as if everybody else is acting and he's just going through the movie being natural.

Ultimately, this is a very predictable picture, made by the director of “The Full Monty,” Peter Cattaneo. Its formula inevitably rises up like a wave and submerges everything Thomas is trying to do. To extend the metaphor, she swims along and doesn’t drown. But unless you love this kind of movie, Military Wives will be, at best, a pleasant diversion and, at worst, a not-so-bad waste of time.

A risky, foolish, intelligent comedy.

A maddening film, maddening in a good way, but maddening nonetheless.

A cut above most pictures of its type.

As is appropriate in a well-crafted and meticulous movie, the acting is strong down the line.

So the situation is fraught, without being clear-cut; in other words, interesting.

Much of the success of Little Pink House comes from the casting and the performance of Catherine Keener, an actress that has, simultaneously, an aura of glumness and an atmosphere of fun about her.

The Current War is even better than it has to be. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung give the film a swooping elegance, so that shots that start as close-ups gracefully glide into medium shots, and medium shots give way to vistas. The camera is always moving in a way that suggests grace and flow.

The film may be intended to launch the movie careers of Patrick Stewart and the gang from ''Star Trek: The Next Generation,'' but any vibrancy, any emotional power it has derives from William Shatner as Kirk. And it's not even his movie. [18 Nov. 1994, p.C1]

It's all pleasant but fairly unimportant, and then -- POW -- comes the great scene, almost out of nowhere.

It's precisely that fear that Redford sets out to explore. The Conspirator is all about the un-American things Americans can do when feeling collectively threatened.

The upshot is a film that is stunning to look at, even inspiring at times, but dramatically bizarre. Obviously, this technology has its place, but it makes too strong a statement to be casually used in remakes.

Harry Brown has more to say, about aging, about old-school courtesy in collision with blind stupid violence, and about how sometimes pensioners on a fixed income get stuck in neighborhoods that turn dangerous.

Dull but sweet.

There's talent here, but for directing, not writing. If Ritchie wants to last, he's going to have to allow somebody else to write his screenplays.

Skids into absurdity, but it never quite gets boring. Movies like this rarely are.

It’s oddly worth seeing.

In color, style and humor — even in its graphics and editing — it’s very much like a Godard film from the mid-1960s. Thus, the experience is like watching an actual Godard film — the first great Godard film since “Masculin Féminin” in 1966.

Can't be dismissed. Yet something keeps this movie from being completely satisfying: a disconnect between the plot and the point.

The back and forth, the listening and reacting between Mirren and McKellen, as each of their characters gauges the other and as we mark the incremental shifts and exchanges of power, is pure pleasure.

Cruise's undeniable star voltage makes it all palatable, and the film is gorgeous to behold and even to listen to, from the rolling green hills to the galloping horses to the "Lohengrin"-like theme music on the sound track.

You could blast for it, and you still won't find 30 uninterrupted seconds of truth in Baby Mama. The characters are lies. Their emotional workings are lies. The jokes are based on lies about human behavior.

Song to Song is Terrence Malick’s first truly awful film. In it, he does all the things that Malick does, except for all the great things that Malick does.

The brilliance of what Iñárritu does here is that, if you watch any scene in “Bardo” for 30 seconds, you will keep watching. But you have to be willing to give him those 30 seconds at the start of each scene. You have to work with him a little.

If there’s a weakness to The D Train, it’s only in the filmmakers’ ultimate choice to stop the pain right before the finish, as if any good might really come to the characters they’ve created. Perhaps the assumption was that, by then, audiences will have suffered enough. But some misery you really can’t get enough of, especially when it’s happening to other people.

The film's real find is D.J. Qualls, who is very funny as a jug-eared nerd who blossoms into a wild man after three days on the road.

Yes, the movie's watchable, and there are about six good laughs in it, but six good (not great) laughs in 90 minutes is pretty paltry for a comedy.

The beauty of The Joneses is that the salesmen are as much the victims as the people they're deceiving.

A few things make The Adam Project a little better than bearable.

The good news about Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of the Fitzgerald masterpiece is that he doesn't use the novel as a mere pretext for his own visual invention, but genuinely tries to capture the Fitzgeraldian spirit, and for the most part, despite some vulgar lapses, he succeeds.

It blends an intriguing concept with a suspenseful plot, and the result is a gripping 103 minutes at the movies.

Hardly perfect or fully successful, but it's strange and strangely beautiful -- a unique work of art.

The saving grace of Old School is that it has about a dozen funny moments. These moments aren't mildly funny or chuckle funny but really funny.

An odd hybrid but a successful one. It marries the lyricism and heavy atmosphere of a European art film with the soaring spirit of a Hollywood love story.

The movie is achingly slow, and by the time it's over, the story is about where it should have been after about 45 minutes. Then it ends just as it gets good, or as it's starting to.

What's impressive about Clooney in The Men Who Stare at Goats is how he marries his goofy, comic side with his dramatic side.

Higher Learning says nothing new or challenging and is too naive to inspire controversy.

Dunston Checks In is a fast- moving, well-done farce that both kids and adults will enjoy.

Perhaps the movie's use of the past is more than cosmetic in this one regard: Watching Woody Allen revisit his old themes and obsessions already feels like a nostalgic experience. Actually setting the movie back in time deflects this and makes a virtue of a shortcoming.

More thoughtful and pleasing to the eye than any blockbuster in recent memory, but its epic length comes without an epic reward. It's a slow ride to the same old place, nonstop action, accelerating in scale, culminating in the smirking promise of a sequel.

Needless to say, the actors are better than the material.

With its fake-looking technology and empty characters, Volcano eventually becomes as obvious as its what-if premise.

Yet here's what's strange: As awful as To Rome With Love is - and the awfulness is unmistakable - it is, as an experience, not unpleasant. You will probably see several better movies this year that you will enjoy less. It's a mess, but it's Rome. It's a mess, but it's Woody Allen.

Epic in sweep and scale and packs in enough incident to cover two "Godfather" movies.

Has a goofy enthusiasm for itself that's contagious.

One of the few big-fish horror films that still has the power to surprise.

Neither funny nor outrageous nor horrifying nor conventionally affecting.

If, while watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, you start wondering why Ben Stiller is acting strange, the answer comes during the closing credits: "Directed by Ben Stiller."

Serious intent may be lurking somewhere in there, but it's buried under layers of stupidity - not just stupid jokes, which is what you want from Sandler, but also stupid, shallow thinking.

A complete bust, but the ways in which it fails are interesting.

Bigger is not always better. Thor: The Dark World pumps up the action and special effects and loses some of the human element that made the original "Thor" something charming and unexpected. True, this sequel gets better as it goes along, but that's a very steep climb just to arrive at not bad.

The picture meanders and goes back in time for needless flashbacks, and in the end the comedy mutes whatever punch the dramatic elements might have had.

The movie equivalent of an idiot who, to avoid scorn, starts acting like an even bigger idiot, so as to get in on the joke, too...It takes everything and nothing seriously, depending on what the filmmakers think they can get away with at any given moment, and the result, while not painful to watch, is ridiculous.

It’s not for people in the midst of their teen years, but for kids who are right on the edge of that social, hormonal discombobulation and are anticipating it with fear and dread. If “To All the Boys” gives courage and reassurance to apprehensive preteens — and is there any other kind? — then it will have served its public service. Still, as a movie, as entertainment … eh, it’s OK.

The effect of the 2 1/2-hour film is deadening.

In dramatic terms, Spiderhead is mostly a face-off between Hemsworth’s irresistible force and Teller’s immovable object. It offers the pleasure of watching two actors, just coming into their full powers, going at it full-bore, moment by moment. And each makes the other’s performance better.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League may not be a great film, but it has the madness, strangeness and obsessiveness of a real work of art.

It’s a flat, forlorn movie with occasional sparks of life.

Lucas knows his fans are un-boreable, un-annoyable and inexhaustible. For an artist, that's more a curse than a blessing.

Entrapment is an adventure movie without two brain cells to rub together.

You're in that world, sucked in by the music and the performances. Appreciate the big things, but while watching, also pay attention to the little grace notes that make up a quality production.

Too labored and cliched to incite passion in an audience.

An American reissue, with a fresh new soundtrack and all the dialogue dubbed.

After a slow start, it moves.

This is an embarrassing film. It's a sex comedy that sets itself up as a satire of middle-class mores, except there's no truth behind any of its observations. LaBute tries to be shocking and manages only to be shockingly puerile -- tasteless in a high-school-boyish sort of way.

It's an art-direction, Dolby-sound, special-effects extravaganza, a grand-scale effort that's more awe-inspiring than completely successful as entertainment.

If only Streep would have put down the microphone and let Springfield sing “Jessie’s Girl,” Ricki and the Flash might have had half a chance.

Sparks' strengths include not just a powerful voice but also a radiant niceness, and that becomes part of the story.

It touches, in a way movies rarely do, on some essential current of life.

The fuzziness is suddenly and definitely gone, and Reeves emerges as a mature, charismatic movie star.

It might be enough that 12 Strong makes you feel good that the United States still produces guys like this. Too bad we didn’t get to know about the real guys and their actual story.

More accomplished, adventurous and original. Instead of Allen's usual investigation into the nature of existence, this new film looks at the way stories are created, particularly comedies.

Modern film noir done with flair and commitment.

It takes about 20 minutes to catch on that Friday is without narrative drive - and about as long to figure out that the film offers nothing better in place of it.

The bad outweighs the good and the cringes outnumber the laughs in Brüno, a disappointment from Sacha Baron Cohen, whose "Borat" was one of the funniest movies of the decade.